


For Now

by Celia_and



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Co-workers, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Oral Sex, Smut, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:14:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22689091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celia_and/pseuds/Celia_and
Summary: There are plenty of things he could say, but he doesn’t.Buying you muffins makes me excited to get out of bed in the morning. I wish I could go back in time and be the kind of person you could like. I don’t remember my life before you.----------When Kylo finds his soulmate, she doesn’t know, and he doesn’t tell her.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 249
Kudos: 1975
Collections: For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange, Numerous OTPS Infinite Fandoms





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maq_moon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maq_moon/gifts).



> This fic fills the following prompt:
> 
> "Soulmate AU where Ben knows and Rey doesn't. He won't tell her because she *really* irritates him/he genuinely dislikes her/he thinks she hates him/an angsty reason of your choosing. Happy ending!"
> 
> 💛

When Ben is four and learning his letters, he starts to be able to read the markings on the back of his mother’s neck. The first letter stands big and tall, like a house without a roof: _H._ The next has a little stem on the side, like a sideways apple: _a._ The next one he knows from his own name: _n._ After that comes a space, then a squiggly snake: _S._ Then two Cheerios separated by a tall, straight line whose name he can’t remember, but he knew what sound it makes, like _lion._ _Han Solo._

When Ben is seven, he learns about soulmates in school. His teacher tells them that everyone is born with their soulmate’s name on the back of their neck. She says that some people want to know their soulmate’s name, but other people don’t want to know, so they should never, ever say the name on anyone’s neck out loud. They have to write stories about what they think their soulmate will be like when they meet them. Everyone else is writing, but Ben looks down at the lined paper and rolls his pencil back and forth on the desk because he doesn’t know what to say. He pretends to have a stomachache when the teacher asks him why.

When Ben is nine, his parents start fighting more often. They think he can’t hear them but he can, even with his pillow over his head at night. He doesn’t understand why their names are on each other’s necks if they’re going to fight anyway. He wonders if he’ll fight with the person whose name is on his neck. Probably.

When Ben is twelve, he asks his mom if she won’t cut his hair so short. He doesn’t say, _So it will cover up the mark_. His dad harumphs, but his mom agrees. The next time she fastens an old bedsheet around his neck on the kitchen linoleum and gets the shears out, she leaves a longer fringe at his nape. Ben thinks she regrets it afterward. When she walks by him now she caresses the back of his neck like she’s remembering what she used to be able to see. The future she still imagines for him. He starts to shrug off her hand when she touches him.

When Ben is fourteen, a boy in his class is suspended for saying the name of a girl’s soulmate aloud. The only reason he’s not expelled is because the girl had already looked to see what the name was. Her parents decide not to press charges. It’s all anyone talks about for weeks. The boy returns to school three months later, suitably chastened. No one really talks to him after that.

When Ben is fifteen, he breaks his dad’s jaw. He doesn’t remember afterwards exactly how it happened. They’re all three yelling—his dad, his mom, and him—but that’s nothing new. The difference is that now there’s something in him that makes him form his hand into a fist and pull it back and propel it with force toward his dad’s face. Ben is dazed afterward, and when he looks at his hand there’s a trickle of blood from where one of his knuckles split. He looks up and sees fear on both of his parents’ faces. At least that’s something they can both agree on. His dad starts going away more and more—“for work,” he says. His mom pretends everything is fine.

When Ben is sixteen, he gets the closest he’s ever come to looking at his mark. One night he goes into the hall bathroom and gets the hand mirror from the cabinet under the sink and turns around and starts to raise the mirror. The only thing that stops him at the last second is the knowledge that if he looks now, he can never _not_ know. And the rest of his life is a long time, to know something that he might wish he didn’t. He puts the hand mirror in the garbage bin outside while his mom isn’t looking and uses a Sharpie to scribble over the camera lens on his phone so he’s not tempted.

When Ben is seventeen, he has sex for the first time, in the basement at a house party when Poe’s parents are out of town. The girl is on the volleyball team. They make out on the couch for a while, but when she unzips his pants and takes his dick out she turns around, so she’s facing away from him as she lowers herself onto him. Her hair is swept to the side, over her shoulder. He clenches his hands beside him on the couch and watches the name as it bobs up and down. _Jason Miller._ Afterwards, she gives him a peck on the cheek, fixes her clothes, and goes back up upstairs to rejoin the party. He sits there for a while, wondering if he’s supposed to feel something.

When Ben is nineteen, he doesn’t move back to his parents’ house the summer after his first year of college. He gets a crappy apartment that he shares with Poe and another guy and gets a job at a FedEx, doing the print jobs and binding. When he tells his parents, he pretends that this is just for the summer, that he’ll eventually be back home before he becomes an adult and moves out for real. They pretend too.

When Ben is twenty, he legally changes his name to Kylo Ren. He doesn’t tell his parents; he lets them hear it from someone else. Poe registers with soulmatch.gov and finds his soulmate. He and Finn move in together and set up house like they’re not twenty-year-olds, like they’re ready to have this be the rest of their life. Kylo starts working longer hours so he has airtight, Poe-proof excuses not to hang out with them.

When Kylo is twenty-one, he gets drunk and goes to a seedy tattoo parlor to get his mark covered. He looks all the way through the grimy catalog of designs, then goes back and starts from the beginning again. Nothing is right. When he’s looking through for the third time, the guy at the desk decides he’s too drunk and refuses to have someone tattoo him, even if he chooses a design. He wakes up the next morning with a hangover and doesn’t try again. He grows his hair out longer.

When Kylo is twenty-two, he graduates with a degree in public administration. He gets a job as a research assistant in the city council’s office. He’s good at the parts of his job that don’t involve people. Most of his coworkers tend to avoid him, which is fine with him. Unmatched women who visit the office try to flirt with him sometimes, and he doesn’t respond. They generally get the message. They wear their hair up in buns or other hairstyles off the neck, so their soulmate can see his name if he’s standing behind them in an elevator or something. He wants to tell them, _If they didn’t register on soulmatch.gov, they don’t want to find you. They’re not going to fall in love with you in an elevator._

When Kylo is twenty-five, his dad has a heart attack. It’s not fatal, but it’s bad enough that his mom calls the office to tell him. She calls his cell first, but he doesn’t answer. (Once a month or so, he goes into his missed calls and deletes the records that build up from her.) The office receptionist hands him the message on a Post-it note. His mom gave the name of the hospital and his dad’s room number, like she’s sure he’ll get in a cab and go straight there. He doesn’t. He recycles the Post-it and goes back to work, mapping the forecasted supply of affordable housing in the city over the next five years. His mom calls the office again the next day. And the next. And at 4:42 on the following afternoon, the message is different. There was another heart attack, a bigger one. His dad is dead. The receptionist tells him haltingly. He thanks her for telling him and finishes up the email he’s drafting. He gets his jacket and leaves the office for the day. Instead of the elevator, he goes to the stairwell. After a couple of flights his knees give out and he has to sit down on the step. He goes to the funeral, for his mom. She hugs him as tightly as if he were a good son. He doesn’t cry until later, when he gets home and realizes that they couldn’t even bury him with a jaw that hadn’t been broken.

When Kylo is twenty-six, he starts answering his mom’s calls every once in a while. They don’t talk about anything, really, but she keeps calling anyway. Every call ends the same. She says, “I love you, Ben.” He says, “Bye.” The hurt never heals, but eventually it numbs. He gets up and goes to work, avoids human contact as much as possible, and comes home every evening to his empty apartment. He wonders if this is it: the rest of his life. It won’t be so bad, if he can just stay numb.

When Kylo is twenty-seven, he meets Rey Niima.

* * *

She’s the new policy analyst, and her manager shows her around the floor on her first day. When they come into Kylo’s office and she introduces herself, the first thing he notices is the dimples that pop out with her smile. The second thing is that she wears her hair down: either she’s already found her soulmate, or she doesn’t want to. He wonders afterwards why he cares.

At the all-hands staff meeting the next week, she outlines the project she’s working on. She’s so _animated,_ talking with her hands and eyes that light up when she gets excited. Watching her is easily the best part of his week so far. “...And if we focus outreach efforts on Wards 5 and 7, we’ll be able to reach the greatest number of people who don’t already know about the program.”

“No,” he interrupts, and all eyes turn to him.

“Excuse me?” she asks icily.

“Wards 5 and 7 have the highest _percentage_ of people who aren’t enrolled, but their population is lower overall. If you’re trying to boost numbers, not percentages, outreach should focus on Ward 3.”

Her eyes lose their shine and her mouth forms a hard line. He immediately wishes he hadn’t said it, but it’s too late now. She finishes her presentation, but it’s clear the wind has gone out of her sails. They move on to the next item on the agenda.

She hangs back at the end of the meeting as everyone else gathers their notepads and water bottles. He’s usually the last one out, because he always sits in the corner farthest away from the door, but this time she blocks his exit. “It’s Kylo, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you mind telling me what the hell that was?”

“You interpreted the data wrong.”

“Oh yeah, no, I got that. I was actually referring to you bringing it up in front of everyone instead of telling me after.”

“Decisions get made in these meetings. I didn’t want them to start outreach in the wrong place.”

“But they didn’t, did they? No one talked about outreach strategy.”

“Are you trying to say I should’ve waited to see if they did, to correct you?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. You understand me _so well,_ Kylo.” His name on her tongue drips with sarcasm.

“If it bothered you, I’m sorry.”

Her eyes flash with something more than anger, and in that moment she’s a force of nature. Kylo is electrified. She looks like she’s going to say something, but thinks better of it and leaves the conference room without another word.

He stands there for a minute, reeling from the fact that for the first time since he can remember, he feels something other than _numb._

* * *

“I’m sorry.” He stands awkwardly in the opening of her cubicle the next morning, holding a brown paper bag containing a peace-offering cranberry muffin that he’d gone six blocks out of his way to get at a bakery that had good reviews online.

She swivels her chair toward the source of the voice, and when she sees that it’s him, she crosses her arms. “What are you sorry for?”

“For yesterday.”

“No, I mean _why_ are you sorry?”

“Because you were upset?”

She rolls her eyes. “Kylo, _I’m sorry you were upset_ isn’t an apology.” She turns away from him, back toward her computer.

He quietly deposits the muffin on corner of the L-shaped desk just inside the cubicle’s opening. When he walks by later, it’s gone. He doesn’t know if she ate it or threw it away.

The next day, he tries poppyseed instead. He doesn’t disturb her, just writes _I’m sorry_ on the bag and leaves it on the corner of her desk. She doesn’t turn around.

He asks the cashier for a recommendation the next day, and she says their coffee cake muffins are a best-seller. _I’m sorry._ Next he tries blueberry. _I’m sorry._ Then banana nut. _I’m sorry._ Then chocolate chip. _I’m sorry._

He thinks he’s imagining it, later, when he walks by her cubicle on the way to the bathroom. He does a cartoon-worthy double-take, yanking his head back to look, but his eyes aren’t deceiving him.

There, on the desk: _muffin crumbs._

He gets chocolate chip every day, after that.

* * *

They’re assigned to work together on how to promote pedestrian safety near schools. Kylo will map past collisions and near-misses, and Rey will research best practices and applicable legislation from other jurisdictions. They’ll present them to council in two weeks. The assignment is made by email, so he doesn’t get to see her reaction. He waits seventeen minutes after the initial message comes through, so as not to seem too eager, and then emails her to propose some times and places they can meet to discuss the project. A perfectly cordial, professional email. There are plenty of things he could say, but he doesn’t. _Buying you muffins makes me excited to get out of bed in the morning. I wish I could go back in time and be the kind of person you could like. I don’t remember my life before you._

She responds, “3:45 today will work. Your office”

He spends the next few hours working on fiscal impact analyses, but also trying to decipher her message. Is she still annoyed with him, or was she just in a rush? Why did she choose his office instead of taking him up on his offer to book a conference room? What does it mean that she put a period at the end of the first sentence, but not the second?

By the time 3:45 rolls around, he’s uncharacteristically frazzled. People don’t usually have this effect on him, but she’s not just _people._ She’s Rey.

She knocks on his office door punctually at 3:45, even though he left it partway open so she doesn’t have to.

“Come in,” he answers, and stands automatically. She shoots him a confused glance that says _are you going somewhere?_ and helps herself to the vacant chair in the corner of his little office. He sits back down and wipes his palms on the top of his thighs.

She flips her notepad open, all business. “So how do you want to do this? The two parts shouldn’t really overlap, so we could each do our piece and then put them together at the end for the presentation.”

He clears his throat. “That would be fine.” It _wouldn’t_ be fine.

She closes her notebook and stands. “Great, I love short meetings. See you later, Kylo.”

She’s gone before he can think of how to respond, but there’s one thing he’s pretty sure of. She’s still mad at him.

Over the next week and a half he cleans data and maps it in layers for elementary, middle, and high schools, with overlays of fatal and non-fatal collisions and near-misses by age of pedestrian. He’s pretty happy with the finished product, and if he stays at the office late a few nights trying to make it extra impressive, that’s probably just because he’s a professional who cares about his job.

One night Rey stays late too. He doesn’t realize until he hears faint music from the cubicle area and leaves his office to investigate. It’s some pop song he doesn’t know, and as he approaches her cubicle he sees that she’s kind of dancing along with it in her chair as she types. She’s slipped her shoes off, and her bare toes are curled under her, resting on the floor. He swallows. Her hair sways back and forth just a bit as she dances, just enough to give him tantalizing glimpses of her neck underneath. In that moment he wants nothing more than to go to her and sweep her hair aside and read the name.

She looks toward some papers on her desk, and she must see him out of the corner of her eye, because she fumbles to turn the volume down and turns as she says, _“Oh,_ sorry...Oh. It’s you.”

“Yep, just me,” he replies. “I didn’t realize you were here, I just heard the music and...”

“I can put headphones on,” she says quickly. “I didn’t realize anyone was still here.”

“You don’t need to. But I am.” He stands there awkwardly for a minute, not sure what else to say.

He’s on the verge of heading back to his office when she says, “Well since you’re here we might as well go over the presentation. If you have time?”

“Yes,” he replies quickly. “Yeah. That would work.”

“Are you done with the map?”

“Pretty much, yeah. It’s saved in the shared drive; you can pull it up if you want to.”

“Okay, bring in Marcie’s chair while I look.”

He goes to the neighboring cubicle and rolls the chair into Rey’s. There’s not much room with two office chairs and his legs, but he makes sure not to encroach on her space. He watches over her shoulder as she tests out his map, trying first one combination of layers, then another. “You added bus stops?” she asks absently.

“Yeah, school bus and public buses.”

“And libraries?”

“Just trying to be thorough.”

“Look at this cluster,” she says, pointing to a hotspot of collisions in a semi-circle around a school. “And this one.” She clicks some layers on and off, apparently lost in thought. Then a lightbulb goes on.

She swivels in the chair toward him, her face alight. “All of these schools have a speed camera directly in front of them, right? So drivers do actually slow down because they’re conditioned to expect that a school means a camera, and they don’t want to get a ticket. The collisions aren’t happening right outside the school, they’re happening just _past_ the speed camera zones, when drivers speed up!” She turns back to the monitor. “See? The collisions aren’t clustered right outside the schools, they’re a block in either direction. For pedestrians of all ages. It’s not a school issue, it’s a speed camera radius issue.”

Kylo leans forward, and he wonders how he spent the past ten days poring over the map without seeing what she sees. She’s right, of course. The little glowing red dots of crashes and the blue ones of near-misses happen in a pattern not at the schools, but at the next intersection away.

She’s rummaging through her notes. “I found this study about the optimal distance for speed cameras...what did it say...”

He can’t help it. He blurts out, “I really am sorry, I wanted to make sure you know that.”

She pauses in her search and slowly looks up at him. “Do you know why I was angry?”

He shakes his head.

“I know you don’t.” She takes a deep breath. “Because you’ve always had people automatically assume you’re competent. _Oh, he’s a man, and he’s tall, he must be good at his job._ You’ve never felt what it’s like to have to prove every day that you’re worth keeping around. You don’t have to work twice as hard as someone else to get half the recognition. I was brand new; I hadn’t convinced _anyone_ that I’m good at what I do. And when you said that, it felt like I was being undercut before I even started.”

“I...I didn’t know.”

“I know. But now you do.”

“Thank you. For telling me.”

“Thanks for the muffins.” She smiles, not the brilliant electric smile of enthusiastic ideas, but a soft smile that he imagines she might give someone she cares about.

He’s afraid of doing or saying something to ruin the moment, so he just smiles back tentatively and gets up to go.

He’s wheeled Marcie’s chair back and is halfway to his office when he hears, “But this doesn’t mean you can stop bringing the muffins! You still owe me!”

His smile is so broad, his cheeks hurt.

* * *

They settle into a friendly kind of peace. Their presentation to the council goes over great, and they’re tasked with doing some follow-up research and contacting other cities that have had success in reducing fatalities. She smiles when she sees him now, and tips her head up briefly in a jerky reverse nod. Kylo starts staying late more and more, because there’s nothing more enticing waiting in his empty apartment than the prospect of Rey also staying late, and maybe playing some music. Maybe slipping her shoes off and sitting cross-legged on her chair like it’s her couch at home. He finds himself going to the bathroom a lot more often. And while he _could_ go to the one at the north end of the floor, where the paper towel dispenser isn’t perpetually broken, he always goes to the one that takes him by her.

One evening he stays late enough that the air conditioning shuts off. As the office starts to get uncomfortably warm he debates leaving, but he does actually have a budget memo he needs to finish, so he decides to stick it out for another half hour. Sweat is starting to seep through his shirt by the time he finalizes the memo and packs up to leave. He should just go, really, right toward the waiting bank of elevators, but his feet carry him automatically away from them. He decides to go to the bathroom before heading home.

As he approaches her cubicle, at first he doesn’t think she’s there, because there’s no music. He’s about to turn around to leave when he takes one more step and sees her in her chair, intent on her computer. He almost doesn’t recognize her at first, and it takes him a second to realize why.

He’s not the only one bothered by the heat. Her hair is up, in a high bun secured by a rubber band. It’s indecent, what the sight of her bare neck does to him.

He can’t stop himself. He takes another step.

He needs to know the name of the person lucky enough to deserve her, even if he never meets them. He just needs to know the name. One more step, until he’s at the entrance to the cubicle.

At first he thinks he might be hallucinating. But after he blinks it’s still there, plain as day.

_Benjamin Solo_

He must have made a sound of some kind because she turns, startled, and her hand automatically goes to her neck.

He saw, and she knows it.

She’s saying something, but Ben can’t hear it for the rushing sound in his ears.

She stands and comes toward him, concerned, but he puts out a hand to ward her off. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Not feeling good. Sorry.”

He flees.


	2. Chapter 2

He doesn’t remember getting home. All he knows is this second, now—opening the mirror of the medicine cabinet in his bathroom and angling it just so, so it reflects off the mirror opposite—and he’s lifting his hair and looking at the skin underneath that he’s never seen in his life, until this exact instant.

There it is.

_Rey Niima_

A heaving sob escapes him, and he sits down on the edge of the bathtub, elbows on his knees, and puts his head in his hands.

He cries from joy and loss. He cries for his dad’s jaw and his mom’s hand on the nape of his neck. He cries for Rey and her vivacity and the life she should have, with someone better. He cries at the realization of having found his someone. And of _course_ it’s Rey. He doesn’t realize how he didn’t know the moment he met her, except that he’d never met his soulmate before so he didn’t know what to expect.

When the tears stop and he has a chance to think, his first thought is that he has to tell her. His second thought is that he can’t tell her. How could he possibly? He imagines how crestfallen she would be, and the disappointment that she might try to hide so as not to hurt his feelings. She might smile a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and say _oh!_ in a voice that’s trying to be polite, and _that_ would hurt more than anything.

She doesn’t want to find her soulmate, anyway; she wears her hair down. Maybe she hasn’t even looked at the name. She clearly wants to go through life the way he thought he wanted to, before her: autonomous.

This is the rest of his life. He needs to start settling in.

* * *

The next morning he buys her muffin as usual, so she doesn’t think something has changed. She hasn’t arrived yet when he leaves it on her desk, and he’s thankful.

She pops her head into his office a half hour later, and he’s not prepared. For her hair, now down and grazing her shoulders again, or her voice or _her_. Her essence taunts him.

“Are you feeling better?” she asks.

“Fine.”

She’s taken aback by his curtness. “Okay, I just thought I’d check.”

He hums noncommittally, looking back at his computer.

“Have a good day, Kylo.” He doesn’t look up until after she leaves.

This becomes his new routine: coming in early to leave the muffin before she arrives, leaving at five, and shutting down her attempts at friendliness in between. Except that she’s stubborn; she persists. She still comes by his office and talks to him, even when he doesn’t look up at her or respond beyond vague grunts. When she leaves, the room still smells like her for a minute after. It’s exquisite torture. Maybe he should stop buying her muffins. But that’s all that left to him, really, except watching her in staff meetings.

From his perch in the corner, especially when he pulls his chair back, he can watch her in profile without her seeing. It’s the only hour of the week when he lets himself drink her in, filling his cells with her and storing her up to sustain him.

At one staff meeting, a new intern is introduced. He’s a clean-cut recent graduate who’s a little too eager. “This is Ben,” Marcie says. Rey tenses, on alert. “Remind me of your last name?”

“Stewart,” the intern supplies.

She relaxes. It’s almost imperceptible, but Kylo sees it, of course.

_She knows._

* * *

“I just want to know what’s wrong, Kylo.” She appears in his office so suddenly that he forgets he’s not allowed to look up. She plops down in the chair. “It’s been three weeks. What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” he mumbles, looking down again. He didn’t mean to stay this late; he realizes it’s almost seven. He’s supposed to meet his mom for dinner. She’ll be downstairs in a few minutes.

“See, that’s _exactly_ what I’m talking about! Why are you shutting me down? Did I do something wrong?” She stabs him and then twists the knife, all unwitting.

“No.” He starts packing his things up to leave.

“Kylo!” she exclaims. “Just tell me, I can take it!” Her eyes are so full of pleading that the truth rises to his mouth. It would spill out if not for the voice that comes from the hallway.

“Ben? Are you ready?” His mom appears in the doorway, and Rey turns to her.

“Ben?” Rey asks, confused. “This is Kylo.”

It’s like seeing a car crash about to happen; he can’t do anything but watch.

Leia turns to her, beaming. “Oh sweetheart, I watched the nurse write his name on his birth certificate myself. It’s Ben. Benjamin Solo.”

Rey turns white. Heedless of Leia’s presence, she turns to face him, trembling. “You knew. You saw...you knew. And you didn’t...”

“Rey,” he pleads. It’s all he can say. “Rey.”

It’s not enough. She stands silently and brushes past his mom in the doorframe, and she’s gone.

* * *

She doesn’t come to work the next day, or the day after that. By Friday afternoon he’s frantic. He can’t go the whole weekend without seeing her and trying to explain. He goes into the emergency contact folder in the shared drive to find her address. He knows it’s creepy and selfish, and she obviously doesn’t want to see him so he shouldn’t force his presence on her, but his willpower is worn down to nothing after weeks of pretending he doesn’t care.

That evening he gets a cab to her place. The whole way there he tells himself why this is a bad idea, why he should just go home and leave her be. He keeps telling himself as his feet carry him to her door and he raises his hand to the old door knocker. He lets it fall once, then twice. He hears movement inside. His heart is in his throat.

He self-consciously trains his gaze on the peephole, awaiting her inspection. After a long moment, her voice comes faintly through the door. “Why are you here?”

“I...I needed to see you.”

“Why?”

“To explain.”

“What is there to explain, Kylo?” He has to strain to hear her.

He hesitates. He wishes he knew the perfect words that would make her understand him. But instead he says, “My best friend left me seven years ago, and I’ve been lonely every single day since then. He left because once he met his soulmate, I wasn’t enough. And I don’t know how to be a soulmate. My parents were soulmates and they hated each other, and I don’t want to do that. I’m scared.”

He takes a step toward the door as he speaks, and when he finishes, his hand lays flat on its peeling paint, his head bowed.

She doesn’t answer. Minutes go by, and nothing. Finally, he straightens up and turns to go. He’s a few steps away when he hears the metallic click of a bolt. When he turns back, she’s there. She’s in a ragged old tee-shirt and lumpy sweatpants, and her hair is a mess and her eyes are red, but she’s never looked so beautiful to him.

She holds the door open as he hopefully comes to her. There’s a moment of hesitation as she studies him, but finally she steps back and leaves him enough space to step inside.

She pads over to the couch and folds herself into one corner. She sits there, watching him as he stands awkwardly. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

Finally she says, “You didn’t bring me a muffin.”

“I can go get one, if you want?” he asks earnestly, half-turning back toward the door.

She smiles so quickly it looks like it’s in spite of herself. “Come sit.”

He swallows and walks over to where she waits. He sits down at the end of the sofa opposite her, trying not to take up more space than he absolutely has to.

“I need to ask you a question,” she says, “to determine how mad I am at you.”

He nods.

“Did you know since we met?”

 _“No,_ of course not. I only looked at my mark for the first time the night I saw yours.”

She considers him for a moment in silence, and he seems to pass some test. “But you’ve still known for three weeks without telling me.”

“I...didn’t know how.”

“Because you don’t want to have me as a soulmate.”

He’s horrified. “Rey, no, you—you’re...you deserve so much better than me.”

She laughs bitterly. “‘It’s not you, it’s me?’ Don’t worry, Kylo, I get it.”

He _needs_ to make her understand. Nothing in his life is so important. “When I was a kid, my parents were fighting more often than not, it felt like. They made each other miserable, and I always wondered how the universe got it so wrong. So I stopped believing in the whole soulmate, predestination thing pretty early on. I didn’t look at my mark, and I just decided to live my life and let my soulmate live theirs. Maybe I would miss out on some good things, but I also wouldn’t become my parents. And then my dad died, and it was too late for them to become anything other than what they were, so that was it. But then...then I met you, and it never even occurred to me that you were my soulmate, because I think I’d forgotten how to be happy so I didn’t recognize it when it came. I don’t know how to be a soulmate or the kind of person who could be with you, but I just want to be in your life. In whatever way you’ll let me. And if that’s just coworkers, that’s fine, but you have to promise to tell me if you get tired of chocolate chip muffins so I can switch to a different kind.”

She’s silent for a while, processing. He waits. Finally she says, “You know why I didn’t search for you?”

He shakes his head.

“Because of the possession thing. ‘Your’ soulmate. I don’t want to belong to someone.”

“I don’t want you to belong to me.”

“Good.” She thinks for a minute. “I like you, Kylo.”

His heart swells. “I like you too.”

“Maybe we could just...date. Or hook up. Not make it a thing. No belonging.” She looks up at him, trying to gauge his reaction.

There’s zero hesitation. “Anything. Anything you want.”

“Okay then.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t know what to do next. He could so easily just close the distance between them on the cramped couch. He looks at her and her eyes are dark. He thinks that she might be thinking the same thing.

“You should probably go home,” she says in a low voice.

He’s caught in her spell. “Okay.” He doesn’t move.

“Kylo.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll see you on Monday?”

“Oh.” He stands up, and so does she. When he walks to the door, she follows. He turns the knob and opens it to leave. Just over the threshold, he turns back. “Rey, will you go out with me?”

She doesn’t answer, she just grabs his shirt and pulls him back inside. When their lips crash together, he feels like he found something he didn’t even know he’d lost.

After an eternity and far too soon, she pulls away, panting, and he grasps at the air. “You should go home,” she repeats.

He’s dizzy. “Rey...”

“Go home, Kylo.”

“Call me Ben.”

“Go home, Ben.”

“Go out with me.”

“No, come over.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Or how about today.”

“Okay.”

She grabs him again, and their lips meet and his arms curl around her. She fills his senses; he’s nothing but her. But this time, he’s the one who pulls away. “I should go home.”

“No.”

“You said you want me to leave.”

“I changed my mind.” She starts unbuttoning his shirt, and he grabs her wrists. She looks up.

“Are you sure?” he asks, searching her eyes.

She meets his look with an even stare. “If you’re not inside me in sixty seconds, I’m never speaking to you again.”

He rips his shirt open the rest of the way, and some buttons scatter on the floor. He gropes for the hem of her shirt as her lips press against his insistently, but she bats his hands away and pulls apart from him long enough to pull it off herself, followed by her sweatpants. In his haste he pulls his pants down before taking off his shoes, so he trips over himself a little as he struggles to toe his loafers off and free his legs. He succeeds, finally, and his boxers follow. Only his socks remain, but they’re not a priority right now, not when his cock throbs with need and she’s naked and wanting and _there._ He yearns to take her to bed and do this right, but he doesn’t know how many of the sixty seconds are left and he can’t risk it. So he backs her up against the wall by the door and bends down to loop one of her knees over the crook of his elbow. She stands on tiptoe, and he bends his knees a little, and it’s like a magnet, how unerringly his cock finds her slick opening. He pushes just barely inside, and then he stops and looks at her. At her tangled hair and her flushed skin and the way her chest heaves with the effort of breath. She doesn’t meet his eyes, just threads both of her arms over his shoulders and kisses him again. He swallows her moan as he fills her, and she clenches around him with greedy muscles that want to keep him there. When he pulls all the way out she gasps at the loss, and then moans as he slides in again. He does it again and again, leaving her warmth only to have her welcome him all over again, until he can’t bear to part with her. When he starts to thrust in earnest, her head falls back against the wall, and her hand grasps for purchase.

“Hold on to me,” he whispers. She does, digging her fingers into his shoulders for dear life as he drives into her. Then he pauses, and she whimpers. He stays just barely inside her as he presses his pelvis to hers, grinding against her clit. Then her moans start anew, interspersed with little cries. He doesn’t know how to do this, to be this for someone, but she makes him know. He is made to pleasure her. As her peak approaches, he replaces the pressure of his pelvis with the firm press of his thumb and thrusts all the way into her again. That’s how she unravels, with his cock deep inside her and his knuckle on her clit. He takes her through it and then stills as she descends from the peak, feeling her tremble as her inner walls flutter with the after-shocks. Her eyes close as he bends down to kiss her mouth and the side of her neck. When he brings his hand up to cup her nape and runs a finger over where he knows his name waits, she shakes her head and pushes it away, pushes _him_ away.

He steps back, and before he has time to protest or even think, she drops to her knees in front of him and replaces her pussy with her mouth. There’s no teasing, no hesitation: she swallows him whole. He wants this to last a hundred years; he wants to live inside the sodden heat of her mouth. But his body betrays him, and the tug of the suction she applies pulls his orgasm out before he’s ready. _A little death, indeed._ She pulls back and pumps him through it with her hand, so his come paints her neck in white ribbons.

When she stands, she gives him a smile and then bends down to hand his clothes to him.

As she walks naked to her bedroom she calls back over her shoulder, “Go home, Ben.”

He gets dressed and obeys, walking on air.

* * *

He wants to take her out on real dates, but she always objects. They usually meet at his place or hers, and her rule stands: _inside me in sixty seconds._ Sometimes, after, she lets him cook for her or take her out to eat. Sometimes they sit out on her fire escape and watch the world go by. They talk about work, or movies, or safe, third-date topics that don’t get too close to belonging to each other.

The fourth time they hook up, she tells him that if either of them wants to end it, they need to, no questions asked. He’s still relaxed and warm from spending inside her, so he asks jokingly, “Do you want me to go?”

She answers seriously. “You can stay, for now.”

That’s when it really hits him, how precarious this is. To have had her, whatever pieces of herself she allows, and then lose her? He doesn’t know if he could survive it. He’s playing with fire.

He lives in fear of the day when she’ll answer differently. But he needs to know. So he asks, every time, “Do you want me to go?”

And every time her answer is the same: “You can stay, for now.”

She never lets him take her from behind, where he could see the back of her neck. It’s an intimacy he’s not permitted. But he has her every other way. Her sitting on his kitchen counter as he plunges in wetly. Her on her back on her too-small couch and him holding himself over her as he thrusts so he doesn’t crush her under his weight. Her riding him without restraint on her living room floor, bathed in the late afternoon sunlight. Her in his bed, clinging to him like she needs him.

_“Do you want me to go?”_

_“You can stay, for now.”_

* * *

After a few months, their pillow talk eventually starts to include real, consequential things. They move on from third-date topics to maybe sixth or seventh: their relationship with religion. Their formative experiences. Their hopes and fears. Ben almost lets himself pretend that it means something to her. But he still asks the question, and her answer is still the same.

She’s less inhibited when they’re in a bed. After she rides him on the couch or he fucks her against the wall, the conversation is trivial and light. But when they’re lying in bed, especially at night, she tells him things she wouldn’t otherwise.

Sometimes she writes down things that she can’t say. He buys notepads and leaves them around his apartment and hers, for this purpose. She scribbles down her thought, tears out the page, and hands it to him. He saves every one: a pile of confidences. Some good and some bad. _You make me happy. I don’t like it when you touch my neck. I only ever had one dog in my life, and he loved someone else more than me._

One night, after he makes her come three times—once with his mouth and twice with his cock—she rewards him by letting him lay his head on the comforter on her stomach. She plays idly with his hair, and he thinks that he could die perfectly happy in this moment.

She asks quietly, “Did you ever think about looking at it? Your mark?”

“Of course. I got close a couple times.”

“What made you decide not to?”

“It was something that couldn’t be undone, once I’d done it.”

“Oh.” She’s quiet for a minute, scratching his scalp gently.

Finally he asks, “What made you decide to look?”

“I didn’t.”

“What?”

“I didn’t look.”

“You asked someone to tell you, then?”

“No.”

He’s confused for a few seconds. Then it finally dawns on him, what she wants him to know without having to say the words aloud. “Someone told you. Without your permission.”

She doesn’t answer, just strokes his hairline. He sees red.

“Rey. Someone _told_ you?” He starts to sit up. She shushes him and tugs his hair gently until he lies down again.

“My guardian, Unkar Plutt. I don’t even remember the first time. He would make fun of your name, and say things like how sorry he was for you, to be stuck with me.” He doesn’t interrupt, though he wants to. “He made me work at his pawn shop every day after school. Cleaning, doing inventory, moving things. He wouldn’t let me eat dinner unless I’d finished everything he told me to do. It didn’t have air conditioning, but I never put my hair up, even in the summer. I thought if he couldn’t see it, he would eventually forget. But sometimes he’d just kind of scoff, under his breath, ‘Benjamin Solo.’ You didn’t feel real to me, because I didn’t think I would ever escape him. He used to tell me that he’d bought me and that he owned me.”

Ben has never felt so helpless. She reaches over for the pen and notepad on the nightstand. He waits while she writes. When she hands it to him, he can only just make it out in the light coming from the hallway.

_When I told you I don’t want to belong to someone, what I meant was that I don’t want to belong to someone again._

He grabs her hand and kisses her palm. He tries to put in the kiss what he doesn’t know how to say, and he hopes that she understands. He thinks that maybe she does. 

But even after she pulls him up to her and kisses him with a hot desperation and takes him inside her again, he still asks.

“Do you want me to go?”

“You can stay, for now.”

“I’ll stay as long as you let me, you know that, right?”

“For now,” she gasps as he thrusts. _For now, for now, for now._

* * *

They argue, sometimes. Ben hates it. He hates that when he disagrees with her, he can’t just let her have her way; there’s something in him that insists on making his point.

They don’t yell, but that doesn’t keep him from remembering his parents, and a too-thin pillow over his head and a bloody knuckle. Sometimes he thinks he pushes her because if they’re going to end, he needs it to happen soon because it will kill him. Sometimes he thinks the only thing worse than having it end would be _not_ having it end, and reliving the previous generation.

One day he can’t take it anymore. He goads her, and he can’t stop himself and he despises himself for it, but he needs something real from her. He can’t go on pretending that when she gets tired of fucking him they can just part ways and not have it mean something, not have it mean _everything._ So he provokes her and prods her, and he just needs it to end. _Do you want me to go?_ Every time he asks the question, it chips a little piece of his soul away, and soon he’ll be nothing.

She never, ever tells him to ask her. He always does it on his own. But as they stand on opposite sides of the living room, arguing about something that doesn’t even matter, she finally stops and looks at him—really _looks_ at him. He wonders if she can see the unshed tears gathered in his eyes.

She goes over to the notepad on the end table by the couch and writes something. Then she takes a deep breath and says, “Ask me the question.”

“No.”

“Ben, ask me the question.”

“No.”

“Do it.”

“No! You don’t get to end this!” The frustration and hurt pours out, and he can’t stop it. “You don’t get to pretend this is just something we’re doing for now! I don’t want to _own_ you or _possess_ you, I just want us to acknowledge that this means something! I don’t want you to belong to me, I just want to live my life next to yours!” The tears spill over in hot, angry trails down his cheeks. “I don’t want us to be my parents, but this is _our_ life, and if we don’t want to we don’t have to. We can argue and still love each other. _People can argue and still love each other._ We don’t have to be my parents, and we don’t have to make each other miserable. You make me so fucking happy, all the time, and I’m tired of being scared of that. So I _won’t_ ask the question, and you don’t get to end this today.”

She walks over to him slowly, holding the notebook to her chest. He stands his ground, though he can hardly see for the tears. He feels some big, monumental shift, and it pries open a decades-old vise around his heart.

When she reaches him, she simply says, “I wanted you to ask me the question so I could tell you this.” She tears out a piece of paper and hands it to him.

He wipes his eyes with one hand and looks down. It says:

  
“Turn it over,” she prompts. There’s just one word:

* * *

When Ben is twenty-eight, his tears stop as he takes her into his arms, and they cling to each other. She guides his hand to her neck and rubs his finger over his name. That night, he worships her without inhibition. She piles her hair on the top of her head for him and lets him have her neck and her everything. And he gives her all of him, too, but it was already hers all along.

* * *

When Ben is thirty-one, he zips Rey into a white lace dress. She watches herself in the full-length mirror in their bedroom. He brushes her hair aside, kisses her neck, and whispers the old question.

_“Do you want me to go?”_

_“You can stay.”_

_“For now?”_

_“Forever.”_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I _very_ sincerely hope you enjoyed!
> 
> (My identity will be revealed, along with those of all other Reylo Fanfiction Anthology writers, on Friday, February 21. But I’ll still respond to comments in the meantime!) 😊💛
> 
>  _Edited to add:_ It’s me, [Celia_and](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celia_and)! Thank you _so_ much for your overwhelmingly wonderful response to this story. This is my tenth work, and it holds a very special place in my heart. ❤️
> 
> I’m on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/CeliaAnd2).


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